Source of book: I own this
I actually finished reading this
book a few months ago, but put off writing about it. This is the latest in a
series of books I have read with a couple of long-distance friends. One was in
their last semester of a degree, and got buried, so the book had to wait. It
was their first experience of Trollope, which is always fun.
Rachel Ray should not be
confused with Rachael Ray,
the celebrity chef (whose simple but tasty recipes have been part of our
family’s diet since we had lots of small kids and too little sleep.)
No, Rachel Ray in this case is the
protagonist of this relatively short domestic drama by the master of Victorian
gentle satire, Anthony Trollope. As regular readers know, he is one of my
favorite authors. See the bottom of this post for the full list of posts about
his books.
Rachel is the younger daughter of
a now-deceased lawyer and a widow mother. The older daughter, Dorothea Prime,
is also a widow - and rather happy to be, even if she won’t admit it. She still
wears her weeds years later, and devotes herself to meddling in the affairs of
others as a good, officious Evangelical should. (Trollope was high church, and
skeptical of low church sorts.)
The three of them live together in
a modest cottage, with a modest income. All of this is disturbed, however, when
there is a visitor to the quiet village.
The old brewery - which is
renowned for making really terrible beer that none of the locals drink - has
been run by old Mr. Tappitt, after the death of his partner. However, the heir
of that other half interest has come of age, and is eager to assert his rights
as an equal partner in the business, and raise its standards to that of good
beer.
That Luke Rowan is also handsome
and charming wins some of the villagers over, and alienates others.
The Tappitts…well, mostly Mrs.
Tappitt…has dreams of one of the young Tappitt daughters marrying Luke, thus
keeping the business in the family, so to speak.
But Luke sets his sight on Rachel
Ray.
The central drama of the book is
whether Rachel and Luke will end up together. This being Trollope, the happy
ending is not a foregone conclusion. Will the misunderstandings between the
couple, and the prejudices of the families prevent the match? Or will love
prevail?
There is also a fascinating
sub-plot. Mrs. Prime is courted by Rev. Prong, an Evangelical minister very
much of her religious beliefs. But there is a problem: Mrs. Prong has her own
fortune, inherited from her late husband, and she has no intention of letting
go of it. So she refuses to marry without a contract preserving her wealth. And
Rev. Prong, who is probably sincere in saying he doesn’t want her money, finds
the principle of this refusal to be a problem. Will she trust him with
everything, or not? Is he the ruler of his wife, or not?
I won’t reveal the ending other
than to say that both plots could easily have gone the other way, and the story
still would have felt concluded in accordance with the personalities and
circumstances.
For Trollope, the plots are
important, but not the most important thing. In many of the books, the ending
is telegraphed from nearly the beginning. What matters is the way each of the
characters respond to circumstances and to each other.
In this book, what goes on in
Rachel’s head is the most important. But Trollope also examines the thoughts
and feelings of Mrs. Ray, Mrs. Prime, Luke, and various members of the Tappitt
family.
As might be expected from
Trollope, it is all complicated and messy. Because humans are. This is why I
love reading Trollope so much. Even the purest of heroines have internal
struggles and mixed motives and often ambivalence. Even the worst of villains have
interior lives that belie their horrid actions.
In the case of Rachel, she is torn
between loyalties. She wishes to make her mother happy, and not disturb the
family dynamics. But she also is developing loyalty to Luke. She wants to be as
good as she can be, but also resents that her motives are impugned by those who
have no idea either who she is as a person, or what Luke’s intentions are
toward her.
And so it goes for all the
characters. Nobody has perfect knowledge, and armed only with the imperfect and
partial comprehension of the facts, everyone makes errors in judgment and takes
actions that make things worse. And the social conventions of Victorian
small-town England do not help clarify communication. At all.
Looking back, I wrote down a lot
of quotes. I’ll do my best to feature the finest, but there will of necessity
be spoilers. So if you really want to read it first, come on back later.
I’ll start with the opening, which
is some of Trollope’s finest writing.
There are women who cannot grow alone as standard trees; -
for whom the support and warmth of some wall, some paling, some post, is
absolutely necessary; - who, in their growth, will blend and incline themselves
towards some such prop for their life, creeping with their tendrils along the
ground till they reach it when the circumstances of life have brought no such
prop within their natural and immediate reach. Of most women it may be said
that it would be well for them that they should marry, - as indeed of most men
also, seeing that man and wife will led the other strength, and yet in lending
lose none; but to the women of whom I now speak some kind of marriage is always
indispensable, and by them some kind of marriage is always made, though the
union is often unnatural. A woman in want of a wall against which to nail
herself will swear conjugal obedience sometimes to her cook, sometimes to her
grandchild, sometimes to her lawyer. Any standing corner, post, or stump strong
enough to bear her weight will suffice; but to some standing corner, post, or
stump, she will find her way and attach herself, and there she will be
married.
This is the description of Mrs.
Ray, and she is very much of this sort. After her husband’s death, she gloms on
to her eldest daughter, in a rather unhealthy way. (And hey! There is a similar
dynamic in my birth family…)
The description of Luke is also
interesting.
He was a young man, by no means of a bad sort, meaning to do
well, with high hopes in life, one who had never wronged a woman, or been
untrue to a friend, full of energy and hope and pride. But he was conceited,
prone to sarcasm, sometimes cynical, and perhaps sometimes affected. It may be
that he was not altogether devoid of that Byronic weakness which was so much
more prevalent among young men twenty years since than it is now. His two
trades had been those of an attorney and a brewer, and yet he dabbled in
romance, and probably wrote poetry in his bedroom. Nevertheless, there were
worse young men about Baslehurst than Luke Rowan.
The Byronic
sort who writes poetry in secret. That’s classic.
One of the idiosyncrasies of Mrs.
Ray is her distrust of all young men. Which is kind of odd, considering she
married, and her elder daughter married. But particularly when it comes to
Rachel, all young men are suspect.
[S]he was filled full of indefinite horror with regard to
young men in general. They were all regarded by her as wolves, - as wolves,
either with or without sheep’s clothing. I doubt whether she ever brought it
home to herself that those whom she now recognized as the established and
well-credited lords of the creation had ever been young men themselves. When
she heard of a wedding, - when she learned that some struggling son of Adam had
taken to himself a wife, and had settled himself down to the sober work of the
world, she rejoiced greatly, thinking that the son of Adam had done well to get
himself married. But whenever it was whispered into her ear that any young man
was looking after a young woman, - a wife for himself, - she was instantly
shocked at the wickedness of the world, and prayed inwardly that the girl at
least might be saved like a brand from the burning.
So when Rachel and Luke linger on
the path to talk, well, Mrs. Ray and Mrs. Prime are all condemnation. Even
worse, Rachel, as she grows up, has started to decline to attend the Dorcas
meetings her sister runs.
How was her sister to enforce her attendance? Obedience in
this world depends as frequently on the weakness of him who is governed as on
the strength of him who governs.
A truth to keep in mind in our own
era. Rachel simply refuses to be bullied. Central to the conflict in the Ray
family is Rachel’s determination that she will not be ruled by her sister. As
one who has been expected to obey my younger sister - even more that my wife
should obey my younger sister - I very much feel Rachel’s frustration
throughout the book.
“It is this, mamma. Dolly and I do not agree about these
things, and I don’t intend to let her manage me just in the way she thinks
right.”
Rev. Comfort, who is Evangelical,
but not that Evangelical (if that make sense) has been Mrs. Ray’s
clergyman for some time. Throughout the book, he is mostly the voice of
reason, although he also is a bit clueless about what is going on outside of
his immediate view, which causes its own problems.
There is a fun line where his
personal feelings are a bit complex. He probably doesn’t even realize that he
resents Mrs. Prime switching churches, but he does think she has become too
judgmental.
But Mr. Comfort, in what he had said on this part of the
subject, had shown no consideration whatever for Mrs. Prime. “Then she’ll
behave very wickedly,” he had said. “But I’m afraid Mrs. Prime has learned to
think too much of her own opinion lately. If that’s what she has got by going
to Mr. Prong she had better have remained in her own parish.”
Mrs. Ray is left reeling after Mr.
Comfort says outright that perhaps Rachel should be allowed to see Luke. It
goes against all her prejudices against young men.
Mrs. Prime, for her matter, has
become one of that certain sort of religious fanatics who obtain great pleasure
from self-denial.
Nice things aggravated her spirits and made her fretful. She
liked the tea to be stringy and bitter, and she liked the bread to be stale; -
as she preferred also that her weeds should be battered and old. She was
approaching that stage of discipline at which ashes become pleasant eating, and
sackcloth is grateful to the skin. The self-indulgences of the saints in this
respect often exceed anything that is done by the sinners.
Mrs. Cornbury (who is Rev.
Comfort’s daughter), takes Rachel under her wing, and takes her to the ball at
the Tappitt residence, where she spends time with Luke. Mrs. Cornbury is one of
the finest characters in the book - and definitely the smartest. She of all the
characters most understands what happens, and indeed does her utmost to see
that Rachel is successful. Including fending off unsuitable young men who
wished to monopolize Rachel’s attention.
“Of course I spoke to him. I was there to fight your battles
for you. That’s why married ladies go to balls.”
At his best, Trollope can be
wicked funny. This scene between Mrs. Prime and Mr. Prong is a great example.
He has just proposed to her - in fairly business-like terms, not unlike Mr.
Collins in Pride and Prejudice, and she is unsure what she wants to
do.
“I can never make my work equal to that of a minister of the
Gospel,” said she.
“But you can share the work of such a minister. You
understand me now. And let me assure you of this; that in making this
proposition to you, I am not self-seeking. It is not my own worldly comfort and
happiness to which I am chiefly looking.”
“Ah,” said Mrs. Prime, “I suppose not.” Perhaps there was in
her voice the slightest touch of soreness.
“No; - not chiefly to that. I want assistance, confidential
intercourse, sympathy, a congenial mind, support when I am like to faint,
counsel when I am pressing on, aid when the toil is too heavy for me, a kind
word when the day’s work is over. And you, - do you not desire the same? Are we
not alike in that, and would it not be well that we should come together?”
What woman could possibly resist
such a proposal? And it continues, not getting any better.
Mr. Prong in all that he was saying intended to be honest,
and in asserting that money was dross, he believed that he spoke his true mind.
He thought also that he was passing a just eulogium on Mrs. Prime, in declaring
that she was of the same opinion. But he was not quite correct in this, either
as regarded himself, or as regarded her. He did not covet money, but he valued
it very highly; and as for Mrs. Prime, she had an almost unbounded satisfaction
in her own independence. She had, after all, but two hundred a year, out of
which she gave very much in charity. But this giving in charity was her luxury.
Fine raiment and dainty food tempted her not at all; but nevertheless she was
not free from temptations, and did not perhaps always resist them. To be mistress
of her money, and to superintend the gifts, not only of her self but of others;
to be great among the poor, and esteemed as a personage in her district, - that
was her ambition. When Mr. Prong told her that money in her sight was dross,
she merely shook her head.
Trollope notes Mrs. Prime’s
hypocrisy in meeting with Mr. Prong while condemning Rachel for meeting
Luke.
How fearfully wicked would Rachel have been in her eyes, had
Rachel made an appointment with a young man at some hour and some place in
which she might be found alone! But then it is so easy to trust oneself, and so
easy also to distrust others.
Also in for satire is Mr. Tappitt,
who rather prefers to do things the way he has always done them. He has zero
interest in modernizing the brewery the way Luke proposes.
“I’ll tell you what it is, Rowan. I don’t like these
new-fangled ways. They’re very well for you, I dare say. You are young, and
perhaps you may see your way. I’m old, and I don’t see mine among all these
changes. It’s clear to me that you and I could not go on together as partners
in the same concern. I should expect to have my own way, - first because I’ve a
good deal of experience, and next because my share in the concern would be so
much the greatest.”
Tappitt is dead wrong, of course.
They are equal shares, and Mr. Tappitt’s protest that his age and marital
status should make him greater are not backed up by the law. But this is also
the way of so many older people, who assume that the world should be rearranged
for their comfort rather than having to adapt to changes. No matter how the
rest of the story ends, it will not end pleasantly for the Tappitts of the
world.
There is another hilarious
conversation involving a visit by Luke to the cottage. Mrs. Ray asks about Mr.
Tappitt, who Luke explains is a bit indisposed after the ball.
“Is he ill?” asked Mrs. Ray.
Well, no; not ill, I think, but I fancy that the party put
him out a little. Middle-aged gentlemen don’t like to have all their things
poked away anywhere. Ladies don’t mind it, I fancy.”
“Ladies know where to find them, as it is they who do the
poking away,” said Rachel.
Yeah, that’s a pretty good jab at
the guys by Rachel, who is by this point in the story, starting to assert
herself regularly.
The course of love never ran
smooth, however, and misunderstandings arise. One of the problems is the
question of acceptance by their respective families. Technically, Rachel is a
peer with Luke, but financially they are worlds apart. Luke is prepared to
ignore any hostility, but Rachel knows it isn’t that easy for a woman.
This was all very grand and masterful on Rowan’s part, and
might in theory be true; but there was that in it which made Rachel uneasy, and
gave to her love its first shade of trouble. She could not be quite happy as
Luke’s promised bride, if she knew that she would not be welcomed to that place
by Luke’s mother.
I know from bitter experience just
how horrid a mother can be to one’s chosen bride, and Rachel is wise to worry.
In my case, it did eventually come down to choosing my wife over my mother.
Ignoring things was never going to be an option.
The visit of Luke’s mother to the
cottage doesn’t go particularly well, and Luke’s letter to Rachel doesn’t
assuage his fears. (In no small part because Luke decides that he needs to
settle some things about the brewery before returning to town - Mr. Tappitt is
furious at him for refusing to go away, so he has to resolve that issue before
he feels he can wholeheartedly pursue Rachel. Also, he isn’t a good mushy
letter writer, alas.)
You must tell me exactly what my mother has been doing and
saying at the cottage. I cannot quite make it out from what she says, but I
fear that she has been interfering where she had no business, and making a
goose of herself. She has got an idea into her head that I ought to make a good
bargain in matrimony, and sell myself at the highest price going in the market;
- that I ought to get money, or if not money, family connection. I’m very fond
of money, - as is everybody, only people are such liars, but then I like it to
be my own; and as to what people call connection, I have no words to tell you
how I despise it. If I know myself I should never have chosen a woman as my
companion for life who was not a lady; but I have not the remotest wish to
become second cousin by marriage to a baronet’s grandmother.
I mean, that’s pretty funny, but
not the way to woo an insecure young woman.
The fallout around town is
significant too. Mrs. Tappitt in particular takes things ill.
It must not be supposed that Mrs. Tappitt’s single grievance
was her disappointment as regarded Augusta. Had there been no Augusta on whose
behalf a hope had been possible, the predilection of the young moneyed stranger
for such a girl as Rachel Ray would have been a grievance to such a woman as
Mrs. Tappitt. Had she not been looking down on Rachel Ray and despising her for
the last ten years? Had she not been wondering among her friends, with
charitable volubility, as to what that poor woman at Bragg’s End was to do with
her daughter? Had she not been regretting that the young girl should be growing
up so big, and promising to look so coarse? Was it not natural that she should
be miserable when she saw her taken in hand by Mrs. Butler Cornbury, and made the
heroine at her own party, to the detriment of her own daughters, by the
fashionable lady in catching whom she had displayed so much unfortunate
ingenuity? Under such circumstances how could she do other than hate Luke
Rowan, - than believe him to be the very Mischief, - than prophesying all
manner of bad things for Rachel, - and assist her husband tooth and nail in his
animosity against the sinner?
But it is the fallout in the Ray
household that is the most harrowing for Rachel. Mrs. Prime moves out in
protest at Rachel’s supposed low morals in seeing her beau. And Mrs. Ray seems
to expect Rachel to give him up.
She had her rights; and though she did not presume that she
could insist on them in opposition to her mother or her mother’s advisers, she
knew that she would be wronged if those rights were withheld from her. The
chief of those rights was the possession of her lover.
This too rings all to true for me.
I am embarrassed to say that at one point I offered to give up my now-wife if
my parents demanded it. If I could have a mulligan, it would have been to turn
that particular incident from the moment of weakness into a warning shot. At
least, after we married, and the underlying issues came up again, I
unequivocally took my wife’s side, something neither my mother nor my sister
has ever forgiven me for.
I also have to mention the lawyer
stuff. Trollope’s father was a lousy lawyer, who struggled to make enough money
to live on - his wife literally supported the family with her writing. Trollope
is no real fan of lawyers, therefore, but also had the knowledge necessary to
get the legal details right in his books.
One of the fascinating passages is
all about the legal battle between Rowan and Tappitt. Luke essentially gives
Tappitt a choice. He can (1) agree to be equal partners with Luke, which will
include letting Luke improve the brewery (2) agree to be cashed out through
lifetime payments of a thousand pounds a year (a heck-ton of money!) or (3)
cash Luke out, with Luke setting up his own brewery in competition.
Tappitt is an idiot, though, and
instead of taking his lawyer’s advice, gets all huffy at the lawyer for not
being “aggressive” enough. The part that Trollope gets oh so right is this:
Had Honeyman clapped him on the shoulder and bade him put
ready money in his purse, telling him that all would come out right eventually,
and that Rowan would be crushed, he would have gone about Baslehurst boasting
loudly, and would have been happy. Then Mrs. T. and the girls would have had a
merry time of it; and the Tappitts would have come out of the contest with four
or five hundred a year for life instead of the thousand now offered to them,
and nobody would have blamed anybody for such a result.
I have seen this so often in
family law cases. A wise attorney - and a wise client - seek the best deal with
the least drama. Those who wave their swords around foolishly tend to come out
worse in the end. But few clients are wise.
The town talks, though, and it
comes back to Mr. Tappitt.
“If a man will go on with a lawsuit when his own lawyer says
he oughtn’t, what else can come to him but ruin?”
Seems there is something in the Bible
to that effect too…
Eventually, as the facts reveal
themselves, the characters find themselves and their relationships to each
other changing. One of the most fascinating is the eventual break between Mrs.
Ray and her older daughter. And it comes, of course, over the question of
Rachel and Luke.
Mrs. Ray protested that Rachel had been right throughout, and
that she herself had been wrong only when she had opposed Rachel’s wishes. Such
a view of the matter was altogether at variance with that entertained by Mrs.
Prime, who was still of opinion that young people shouldn’t be allowed to
please themselves, and who feared the approach of any lover who came with lute
in hand, and with light, soft, loving, worldly words. Men and women, according
to her theory, were right to marry and have children; but she thought that such
marriages should be contracted not only in a solemn spirit, but with a certain
dinginess of solemnity, with a painstaking absence of mirth, that would divest
love of its worldly alloy.
As Mrs. Ray comes around, she
still takes time to understand her role in this. Rachel points this out.
“You’ve no right even to be angry with him, because it was we
who told him that there was to be no engagement, - after I had promised him.”
A third plot thread in the book is
the local election, which involves (gasp!) a Jewish candidate. While Trollope
himself seems fairly sympathetic in theory toward Jewish people, when writing
about small-town England, he is frank about the prejudices and outright hatred
directed at Jews. This, notwithstanding Benjamin Disraeli’s ascent to the
highest office in the land. I wanted to mention this in connection with a
fascinating line, which again shows Trollope’s perception of human social
behavior.
For a true spirit of persecution one should always go to a
woman; and the milder, the sweeter, the more loving, the more womanly the
woman, the stronger will be that spirit within her. Strong love for the thing
loved necessitates strong hatred for the thing hated, and thus comes the spirit
of persecution. They in England who are now keenest against the Jews, who would
again take from them rights that they have lately won, are certainly those who
think most of the faith of a Christian.
Substitute groups here and you
have modern American society.
Mrs. Tappitt again makes an odious
appearance near the end, after the sale of the brewery to Luke has been
concluded.
When Mrs. Tappitt had settled within her own mind that the
brewery should be abandoned to Rowan, she was by no means, therefore, ready to
assent that Rachel Ray should become the mistress of the brewery house.
“Never,” she had exclaimed when Cherry had suggested such a result; “never!”
And Augusta had echoed the protestation, “Never, never!” I will not say that
she would have allowed her husband to remain in his business in order that she
might thus exclude Rachel from such promotion, but she could not bring herself
to believe that Luke Rowan would be so fatuous, so ignorant of his own
interests, so deluded, as to marry that girl from Bragg’s End! It is thus that
the Mrs. Tappitts of the world regard other women’s daughters when they have
undergone any disappointment as to their own.
I do feel a bit bad for Mr.
Tappitt, though, even though he brings about his own pain. Retirement is a sad,
hard thing for many of us - which is why many lawyers do the “old generals”
thing and fade away rather than retire.
In the mean time Tappitt sat sullen and wretched in the
counting-house. Such moments occur in the lives of most of us, - moments in
which the real work of life is brought to an end, - and they cannot but be sad.
It is very well to talk of ease and dignity; but ease of spirit comes from
action only, and the world’s dignity is given to those who do the world’s
work.
That’s really profound. And, as
Trollope further perceives, retirement changes the dynamics of a marriage.
(Something I have seen in my own parents, for sure.)
We may as well declare at once that the days of Tappitt’s
domestic dominion were over, as is generally the case with a man who retires
from work and allows himself to be placed, as a piece of venerable furniture,
in the chimney corner.
But yet there is more to be
wrapped up. Will Rachel and Luke reconcile? Can they get beyond the distrust
that Luke had honest intentions?
In that had been the offense. They had doubted his stability,
and, beyond that, had almost doubted his honesty. He would punish them by
taking them at their word till both should be put beyond all question. He knew
well that the punishment would fall on Rachel, whereas none of the sin would
have been Rachel’s sin; but he would not allow himself to be deterred by that
consideration.
But, Luke is determined to see her
again, and see if she really is as distrusting as those who she was not yet
strong enough to defy. He is, as at the beginning, seen by the poisonous
spinster, Miss Pucker, who tries to tell herself that Luke is again toying with
Rachel.
Though she declared, with well-pronounced mental words, that
Luke Rowan was going on that path for no good purpose, she felt a wretched
conviction at her heart’s core that Rachel Ray would be made to triumph over
her and her early suspicions by a happy marriage.
Also triumphed over is Mrs. Prime,
whose supposed moral code falls before true love. At the end, she is the odd
woman out as Rachel and her mother discuss the future.
But by degrees the delay became so long that she was
tantalized into surmises as to the subject of their conversation. If it were
not wicked, why should she not have been allowed to share it? She did not
imagine it to be wicked according to the world’s ordinary wickedness; - but she
feared that it was wicked according to that tone of morals to which she was
desirous of tying her mother down as a bond slave. The were away talking about
love and pleasure, and those heart-throbbings in which her sister had so unfortunately
been allowed to indulge.
…
She would have been quite willing to see her sister married,
but the lover should have been dingy, black-coated, lugubrious, having about
him some true essence of the tears of the valley of tribulation. Alas, her
sister’s taste was quite of another kind!
In both of the above, I see some
of my own life. For whatever reasons (I can speculate), my mother too had very
detailed and specific plans for how my marriage would go down. And it certainly
did NOT involve my finding someone like the person I did marry. She was
altogether unsuitable - not the dingy, black coated sort at all.
It is immensely satisfying at the
end of the book to see Rachel truly come into her adulthood and stand up to her
mother and sister. Here is another great exchange, when they talk about
Dorothea, who has, as shown above, responded extremely ill.
“When she first heard of him she was taught to believe that
he was giddy, and that he didn’t mean anything.”
“Why should she think evil of people? Who taught her?”
“Miss Pucker, and Mr. Prong, and that set.”
“Yes; and they are the people who talk most of Christian
charity!”
And later:
“What makes me so angry is that she should think everybody is
a fool except herself.”
I’ll end with yet another
satirical scene, involving the mothers of Luke and Rachel. As well as Dorothea
and Rachel herself.
“My own dear child!” said Mrs. Rowan again; “for you know
that you are to be my child now as well as your own mamma’s”
“It is very kind of you to say so,” said Mrs. Ray.
“Very kind indeed,” said Mrs. Prime; “and I’m sure that you
will find Rachel dutiful as a daughter.” Rachel herself did not feel disposed
to give any positive assurance on that point. She intended to be dutiful to her
husband, and was inclined to think that obedience in that direction was quite
enough for a married woman.
You think?
Rachel Ray is a pretty
decent introduction to Trollope, in my opinion. It isn’t the commitment of one
of his really lengthy books, and it isn’t part of one of his epic series. But
you should read the longer ones too, of course.
***
The Trollope list. I have read
more than these, of course, but these are the ones I have written about.
Can
You Forgive Her?
The
Claverings
Cousin
Henry
Dr.
Thorne
Framley
Parsonage
The
Golden Lion of Granpere
He
Knew He Was Right
The
Last Chronicle of Barset
Orley
Farm
Phineas
Finn
The
Small House at Allington
The
Three Clerks
And also, the excellent series
based on The Warden and Barchester Towers:
The
Barchester Chronicles
